My first was Dr Who and the Daleks - I was a great Dr Who fan for - as my mum used to tell every one even when I was in my 40’s ‘when I used to hide from the Daleks behind the chairs’ - Oh those where the days…
It started my collection and I still collect - although I have passed most of it to younger members of the family who are fans now…
But on a similar note - I reacently picked up the first Fantasy fiction I used to read when I was a teenager - Piers Anthony
My first was Secret of the Marauder Satellite by Ted White.
I think my first was a set of Asimov short stoies called *Through a Glass Clearly *- found in the school library when I was about ten. About the same time I found Heinlein’s Space Cadet, also in the library.
Very different but both gripped me and I’ve never looked back 
Actually, looking back I realise I was a very mixed up reader - never could get the idea that some books were meant for a particular age. When I was eight I was reading James Bond and the Famous Five…
My first one is Heinlein’s Space Cadet when I was 9 or 10. I remember how amazed I was when the hero picked up his pocket telephone to answer a call from his mother.
[NITPICK] His father 
[/NITPICK]
I must have been in third grade when we moved to a town with a public library that I could visit without getting Mom to organize a polar expedition. I don’t remember the book, but ISTR a story about building a space ship to travel to Alpha Centauri that looked like a giant oil drum. Does that ring a bell with anyone?
After that, I discovered Heinlein and Asimov’s short stories and was hooked.
And many years later I heard someone claim on TV that there is not one single thing around that has been predicted in an SF book (that the person who said it is married to a distant relative of mine didn’t make it any better).
My first SF was Skylark of Space by E. E. Smith. Luckily I was preteen and hadn’t developed any literary sensibilities. I still haven’t to some extent. I rather pull down one of my Lensmen books and reread it than most modern fiction and still think Heinlein’s juveniles are better than 99% of modern fiction.
Don’t forget that Niven and Pournelle predicted the iPhone in 1974 in The Mote in God’s Eye.
I thought it would be fun to go to Amazon, and maybe pick up a cheap copy of Venus Boy to see how it matched my childhood memories of it. Like maybe a used paperback for a couple of bucks.Nope. :eek:
Not even space suits with airtight helmets? No book predicted that before Yuri Gagarin?
Just a tiny amount of reflection shows the claim to be untrue.
You think your childhood memories are expensive? Try mine.
What did you expect? It’s a hardcover. 
White-haired mutant with abnormally keen night vision and a semi-telepathic cougar who fights giant rats called Beast Things.
I also read a collection whose name I cannot recall. One story, I think the first, was of a soldier on some colony who had long since lost contact with Earth, but under military discipline he knew how to maintain the machines on his base. Nonetheless, when the story opens he is plowing with some other soldiers pulling the plow. He is called into his superior officer’s office, and then his superior tells him to wipe the chevrons off his forehead, giving the impression he is being demoted. Then his superior gives him some insignia or other to “stick in his topknot”, who sort of gave me the impression that he was supposed to be modeled after American Indians.
Then he is captured, fixes the machines on the enemy ship, and then jiggers it so he threatens to fire the ships’ missiles when the ports are closed and blow up the ship.
The only other story I remember was some businessman who was trying to implement a project with a death ray, and all his problems, and at the end finds out the death ray’s range in atmosphere is about half an inch.
Does anyone have any ideas what that was? Long shot, I know - for anyone except Dopers.
Regards,
Shodan
If series books count, I also read some Tom Swift (the originals!) and Rick Brant (the son of a scientist on an island of scientists, doing science-related detective work.)
I think Heinlein juveniles were the first real SF – Have Space Suit, Will Travel and Red Planet. Was devouring Jules Verne novels and H.G. Wells by the time I was 10, and then Andre Norton came next, I think. After that, most everything I could lay my hands on. Which took effort, as I lived out in the country.
That sounds the story **The Spectre General **by Theodore Cogswell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spectre_General
Here is the publication history
I half-remember making a poster for a book report in Grade 5 for Heinleins The Rolling Stones.
I had a book that I loved so much that I swapped it with a friend for Star Trek:Log 4. I had just wanted to trade it to read and then get it back, but we ended up going to different schools and I lost track of Stranger from the Depths. It is a story about a lizard man from the earths core where there is a tremedous civilization. I’m not sure just what resonated with me, but I loved that book. I should buy a copy.
Hm - I think my first SF was Star Circus by Alice Lightner Hopf - IIRC, the SDMB helped me remember the title many moons ago, and then I found a used copy. It didn’t age terribly well, tho there were some interesting creatures in it - a not-exactly-a-pony and a sentient black ooze.
Like Lynn B - Andre Norton was the first SF author I remember being interested in - tho I don’t know when I realized Norton was a “she”. My mom was a SF fan, so I usually glommed on to her library books, since I couldn’t check books out from that side of the library on my card.
That’s it! Incredible!
But I don’t think I read it in the Hall of Fame collection, since I was getting ready to graduate from high school in 1973.
But thanks!
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t remember my first SF book. I know I read the Space Cat books that my library had (Space Cat and the Kittens is the title I remember.)
I also remember reading The Enormous Egg and Heinlein’s The Star Beast. Sometime after that, I discovered Andre Norton and read through all my library had of her.
Starman Jones by Heinlein made a HUGE impression on me in about the 5th grade. It came up on Audible a while back, and I got the audio copy there. It still holds up pretty well. But I’m a sucker for stories that contain brave self-sacrifice too.
Never looked back once I started reading SF & fantasy.